Solutions to a common house problem

mprcomp

Hi,

I am sure someone on this forum may have had this problem and therefore a solution. It's looking good for selling our house finally but the house we want to buy needs a refurb in terms of elecs and skimming etc. I estimate that will mean will be without a home for a month approx.

Is there anyway we can keep our house for a week while having other house? My gut feeling is no due to us no needing the deposit from current house to buy other house.

Not sure if there are any creative solutions but looks like might have stay at a travel lodge for at least a couple of weeks while start of refurb taking place.

Thanks

Paul

andy.m_2

If you are releasing funds to buy the new place then no chance.
You could always buy a small caravan and put it on site.

Lovelyjoolz

You must vacate the property on the day of completion.

Someone on here spend 40 days in hotels in a similar situation I think. 2 days here and 2 days there. Must have been a right pain in the bum!

McKneff

Small caravan in the garden or negotiate with a Bed and Breakfast.

I'd go for the caravan, it may be handy afterwards as a den/playroom etc. or just sell it on.

eddddy

Hi Paul

You could potentially do what you describe using a 'closed bridging loan' - but they tend to be expensive. (Google 'closed bridging loan' for more details)

An example of how this might work:

You exchange contracts on the same day for both your sale and purchase, but...

Your purchase completes 2 weeks after exchange
Your sale completes 4 weeks after exchange

So you have an overlap of 2 weeks where you own both houses. But you will probably need to borrow the full purchase price of the new house (not just the deposit, as you suggest) - unless you have any spare savings to put towards it.

The risk is relatively low - because once contracts are exchanged, your buyer is very, very unlikely to back out (and you can sue them if they do). But the cost of the bridging loan may be higher than the cost of 14 nights in a Travelodge!

(Obviously, if you take the Travelodge route, you will also have the cost of storing your furniture for 2 weeks.)

richardw

mprcomp wrote: »

....the house we want to buy needs a refurb in terms of elecs and skimming etc. ..

Perhaps ask a builder if the work can be done on a room by room basis to minimise the staying in a hotel.

phoebe1989seb

You could just *camp out* in one/two rooms whilst the work is being carried out - that's what we've always done in the past We usually tend to buy project houses and have never needed to live off-site despite some of them being considered uninhabitable by friends and family. Even when DS was very young we lived in the upstairs of one house whilst the downstairs was gutted, then swapped over when that part was done - although we did have the luxury of additional kitchen facilities upstairs!

Our current house was left half-finished by the previous owner and has required major work (including rewiring, replastering throughout, two new bathrooms plus a kitchen extension), but DH and I are pretty tough and quite enjoy living on a building site - I admit it's not for everyone though and after 18 months I am longing for it to be finished now

dimbo61

I had a house rewired, new plumbing with all new copper pipes,new central heating, replastered and new kitchen, windows , new wood flooring and complete repainting of every room done in 8 weeks but we had VERY GOOD BUILDERS and tenants ready to move in!
If you have the money and get yourself sorted it can be done
It is also very stressful

hazyjo

Might get a cheap holiday for a couple of weeks... I'd be tempted to run off to the sun! The other 2 weeks can be spent in hotels/with friends/family.

Good luck! (Worth digging out that thread someone above referred to - some key words will be Reading, Travelodge, hotel).

Jx

motherofstudents

You can ask for permission to do some work between exchange and completion. Depends how much work needs doing but it might be worth looking at.

ceegee

richardw wrote: »

Perhaps ask a builder if the work can be done on a room by room basis to minimise the staying in a hotel.

This is exactly what we are doing at the moment! My builder recommended doing it this way, so that we wouldn't have to pay for alternative accomodation and storage costs.

Currently, we have no kitchen whatsoever....just four walls, one floor and half a ceiling. Two weeks ago, we had no bathroom and were even without a loo for 48 hours, as the new floor tiles had to be laid and grouted and then that meant that the waste pipe from the loo was slightly too high to join the waste pipe in the wall!

If you live in the house whilst it's being done, you have to use quite a bit of imagination just to deal with everyday stuff like washing (self, clothes and dishes), "toilet" stuff (:o), cooking and so on and so forth. Having the electrics done means you may well only have a few sockets available to use at any one time and not every room will have lighting all the time.

It can be dispiriting at times. Many times I have questioned my own sanity in doing this, but I am so very lucky in that my builder is a top bloke and I trust him totally.